A reason to be
by InnocuousLotus
Summary: On a rainy day of July Akira found a boy curling up under the cherry tree in his garden – a clothed bundle hugged close to his tiny chests. And sometimes, there is no need for a reason. AU
1. Chapter 1

**A/n:** Inspired by Forlorn Story Teller's "Disciple of Honinbou". I can't tell you how much I adore her fics ;_;

For 'Of essence concerning our familiars' readers, I will update more regularly once I'm finished with my exams ^^; Please forgive my tardiness **.**

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

* * *

 **A reason to b** **e**

 **(1)**

* * *

On a rainy day of July Akira found a boy curling up under the cherry tree in his garden – a clothed bundle hugged close to his tiny chests. Leaves scattered on the boy's figure, and raindrops seemed to soak through his garments. The child lied there so still that he looked like he was barely breathing.

There had been urgent shouts for assistance and a hurried change of the boy's location to the nearest guest bedroom after Akira got out of his startled silence. A rush call to the doctor had also been made. An hour and a half later, the wizened, old family doctor diagnosed the upcoming of a fever, but luckily – no pneumonia. Relief settled so heavily in him that Akira almost knelt under its weight. Though, he kept his composure, efficiently showed the doctor to the door and thanked him for his help.

Minato-san - his housekeeper - came up to meet him while he was mid-way returning to the guest room, in which the unknown boy was currently residing, "Akira-sensei, I've washed all of the boy's things; they should be dried the next day... Oh, and, I'll bring him some of my son's old clothes tomorrow. I think they'd fit him just fine."

"Thank you, Minato-san. I greatly appreciate it, but I'm also sorry for bothering you," Akira said truthfully.

"Shush, it's nothing, Akira-sensei," Minato-san smiled with a motherly tilt to her lips, seeming well-prepared and empirical as if children's turning up suddenly in your house was usual happenstances. But as quickly as her smile appeared, a sad wondering frown replaced it. "Poor child, though. I can't imagine how long he had been out in the rain, and how he could end up in such a state."

Unable to say anything to her honest words, Akira just nodded in agreement and excused himself. Once he stepped into the guest room, his eyes immediately landed on the features of the unconscious boy and the goban laid adjacent to his futon - to the right of his pillow. From the way the child had held tight to the go board, which had made it very difficult for Akira and Minato-san to fry the thing off his clutching fingers, Akira guessed the goban was something precious to the little boy - who was certainly no older than eleven. Hopefully, when the boy woke up, he would be able to catch sight of his possession right away. It might reduce some of the foretold panic and confusion.

Akira moved to sit next to his unexpected young guest and darted his gaze to the goban again in order to observe it more carefully. Although he was no expert, from visual assessment, he was sure that it was a valuable antique: the lines were beauteously done, the playing surface in perfect condition - on close inspection, indentations from the placement of stones could be seen, but none of them was prominent -, and the wood undoubtedly that of Kaya. The warm aged patina and the well-played-yet-well-kept top grid made Akira marvel at the character the goban seemed to emit and the stories (history) behind. Many games - many beautiful games - definitely had been played upon it. It was a solace, then, that the cloth used to wrap the goban was actually water-proofed, so the item was unharmed from exposure to the earlier rain. And not for the first time that afternoon, Akira wondered at what the boy could possibly have to do with such a worthful goban, and the fact that a mere child had truly been attentive in his way of handling the thing.

Had the kid stolen it from somewhere and coincidentally winded up in Akira's house?

 _Or_ \- was he, too, a Go player? But his sporty attire (properly laundered by Minato-san) and his bleached blond band suggested a complete disagreement to the notion. Nevertheless, Akira was too experienced to let appearances deceive his judgements.

All he could do now was to wait.

* * *

It might have been midnight, or early morning - Akira was not certain. But the sound of sobbing woke him up anyway, and guided his feet to walk through the haziness of disturbed sleep. Clearity came to him instantaneously when Akira found himself face to face with the guest room's shoji doors, from which teary hiccups could be heard. Confused and restless, Akira opened the door with one swift and decisive movement, and was met by the sight of the child - whom he had rescued from the downpour of summer - hunching over the antique goban and shaking terribly. At the noise of the door's sliding, the child immediately looked up, his face red in feverish daze and stained with flowing fat tears.

Before Akira could utter anything, the child snapped assertively and angrily, "You are not Touya-sensei. Where is Touya-sensei?" And it took Akira a moment to realize that the child was refering to _his father_.

"Touya-sensei, my father, is not here. I'm his son, Touya Akira. Why must you ask of my father?" Akira tried to answer as clearly and calmly as could, not wanting to frighten the boy nor to show the fact that he didn't have any idea of how to deal with these situations, except for his unwavering resolve and intensity. It was strange - to witness such fierce expressions on such a young face, and to talk to a kid less-than-half-of-his-age in the controlled, formal way of communicating with people much older. It left his mind reeling in apprehension.

"I-," the boy's previous firmness quickly turned into quivering uncertainty that sent his small stature into a bout of awkward crouching. Akira worried he would cry again, yet the posterior straightening of the boy's back after the prior ambiguity and embarassment was adverse to the older man's fear. Akira glimpsed a determined glint in those bright green eyes when the boy glanced up at him and gave a request - which, as the twenty-five-year-old Go pro would reflect much later, would change his (their) life forever.

"Play a game with me," the child said - with the conviction and fierceness of a loyal warrior - even when his little hands shook under the harsh grip of fever, and his body was stiff with desperate wishes. Akira couldn't help but be drawn to all of it, disbelief and awe warring inside him as he stared at the boy in wonderment.

A game between a little boy and the current Meijin - how inequitable. The result was too predictable to speculate. And Akira was in his sleeping garbs, rumpled and tired after being forced out of his slumber - not an adequate state to take up an offer of a game. But looking at the boy - whose name he didn't even know -, feeling the fire burning in that childish figure, Akira couldn't stop himself from agreeing. The child's expression instantaneously changed into something much more jovial at Akira's reluctant acceptance - he looked more of his age with his guard down and boyish cheerfulness apparent.

"What's your name?" Akira carefully enquired after returning to the guest room once more with two goke in hands, watching the boy jumping a little from his seiza-sitting position before the goban - the flush on his cheeks stood out against his pale skin indicating a still-unabated pyrexia. Akira wanted to get the boy back to his rest, albeit his attempt had been strongly denied and brought to a temporary end by a ferocious, despondent _'please'._

"My name is Hikaru, Shindou Hikaru," the boy - Hikaru now - answered in a low, distracted voice as he stared at the 19x19 lines of the goban and refused to elaborate further. Resisting the urge to exhale a resigned sigh, Akira seated himself on the opposite side of the Go board.

" _Onegaishimasu._ "

The first few clicking sounds of placed stones were heard merging with the stillness of a late night that seemed to stretched on endlessly, as if awaiting for something to happen.

* * *

Morning came with the chirping of birds and rays of tender sunlight passing through the papered screens of the shoji doors. Akira distantly caught the sound of Minato-san's arrival greeting and the soft breathing of Hikaru - dwarfed by oversized pijama - in an exhausted fitful sleep. He stared at the game that he had replayed so many times he couldn't recall exactly, and wondered whether this was real or not. Fresh was his remembrance of those tears rolling down Hikaru's face when the game came to finish, his pained whispered _'It's not enough'_ and Akira's own trembling exhilaration and stunned surprise.

It had been an extremely beautiful game that torn Akira's perspective asunder. A child of that age could not play to such a level of complexity and skill - _could not_ play in the hands that had defeated Akira himself, and then his father, three years ago. Akira just wasn't able to comprehend it, even if the evidence was a hard, cold truth laid out in front of his eyes - stones and stones formed in formations that deserved the greatest of appreciation.

It was _Sai._

#


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

* * *

 **A reason to be**

 **(2)**

* * *

As promised, Minato-san brought along a lot of children clothes for Hikaru. After waking the sleepy child up with gentle fussing, the housekeeper managed to make Hikaru change into something more suitable for his size (and much less sweaty). Because of the midly high temperature Hikaru seemed to suffer still, Minato-san declined decisively the idea of giving him a bath. Some cleanings by towels would do for now.

"Is the broth to your taste?" Minato-san asked, watching over the boy zealously as he digged into the bowl of soup she had just prepared. After all, Minato-san's son had grown up with family of his own, so the middle-aged woman must have missed having someone so small and defendless to look after. She had always been a very protective person underneath her soft, unasuming features.

At Minato-san's enquiry, Hikaru stopped his soup-slurpings, nodded his head a little and tried to beam up to her. His endeavor ended up being a dizzied and crooked grin that seemingly caused Minato-san to melt upon her spot.

"Try to drink some water after you finish the broth, young man. You need as much water as you can," Minato-san continued to fuss, and Hikaru looked like he enjoyed soaking up in her attention - if his blissful expression and instense focus on Minato-san's word-by-word were of any indication.

All in all, Hikaru looked as a child he was supposed to be - if not a bit affection-deprived.

 _Patient_ , Akira told himself, his gazes firmly on the figure of the boy. He knew it was irrational - to feel this irritated. But each flustter of his eyelashes brought back the formations of that game which clung onto his consciousness like an obsession. It was fierce and darkly, as if a flame had been ignited and eager to burn him anew. And to think that such formidable feeling - such revival of urges and thoughts - was caused by the hand of a child who was too little to possess something so big - so unfathomable -, was almost unreal. Akira had questions, _many_ of them clashing and crowding his mind with a consistent buzz that nearly gave him an headache. The Go pro sternly reminded himself that he was not frantic or aggressive in term of manners, and an adult had to act his proper part and maintain his composure - no matter how frustrated, curious, puzzled and anticipated he was.

Once the boy was finished with his meal - eyes following Minato-san's retreating features, Akira allowed a moment of silence to settle between them before he started some kind of conversation, which had never been his strong point.

"Are you feeling any better, Shindou-kun?"

The boy's stiffening almost made Akira regret opening his mouth, but Hikaru quickly eased his discomfort by sheepishly answering while scratching the back of his head - a bashful doing that seemed so out of character to the grimness the child had acted on the night before, "Er.. Yes, I think."

And as if he had just recalled some forms of manner, Hikaru widened his eyes and straightened his back, then immediately folded his body forward in a clumsy - yet determined - display of a half-bow, "...Thank you for taking care of me, mister! And I'm sorry for bothering you this much!" All of those hasty courtesies would have caused Akira to be nauseated if not for a speck of amusement settled in him at such an absentminded reaction of belated politeness. Feeling a little awkwardly benevolent, Akira decided to sparse the boy from his struggle with pleasantries.

"It's quite alright, Shindou-kun -"

"You can call me Hikaru, you know," Hikaru cringed up his nose, looking more cranky and relaxed once he was less ill and free of emotional teary bouts. However, the boy was fast to cover his mouth panicked, perhaps realizing he had rudely cut off an older person's sentence. He darted his gaze at Akira briefly, and looked aside afterward - letting his bang hide half of his flusttered face.

"...I'm sorry, Touya-san," Akira heard him muttered, his voice ashamed and mournfull, "Sai must be so disappointed with me."

That name was like a punching fist to Akira's alertness; he was barely able to stop himself from leaning in close with child-like eargerness, but he managed. It was just a whisper of a mystery, and he was so high-strung it was embarrassing. "Did you just say Sai, Hikaru-kun?" Akira tentatively asked.

Maybe it was his anticipation and impatience leaking through his words, or Hikaru was experienced in dealing with questions behind the name Sai. Whatever it was, upon the older man's wondering, Hikaru thinned his lips and offered Akira only silence. Unsettling was how fast the boy could close himself up like that - features stony and cold as though they were made of walls of defense. Akira knew a losing battle when he saw one, but he also knew a shadow of secret if he caught it lurking. And Sai was a secret that Hikaru didn't like sharing.

* * *

Hikaru refused to talk to him for the rest of the morning, and Akira tried not to be bothered by this. But he did feel felt guilty for being too invasive all the same. The child had just recovered from his fever and started to be at ease in a new environment - then, Akira had to ruin it by his intrusive curiosity. The Go pro acknowledged his lacking ways of dealing with children - how most of them were either awed by his accomplishments or unnerved by his status and seriousness -, but for a majority of his time, Akira didn't invest his effort in fixing such a thing as earning any child's affection. He was not good with kids, and the fact was as irrelevant as it was impersonal to his Go so it didn't stay in his mind for long. However, his interactions with Hikaru demanded him to seek for advices that he had reasonably neglected (or ever thought of asking for that matter).

Because, as limited as they were, the moments he spent with Hikaru helped him glimpse at aspects that made the child not quite like his normal peers. The way the boy seemed to rigidly carry his self with regal stature and the heaviness clinging to his light footsteps as if he had been trained for it spoke of a habbit harshly installed in a stern and critical upbringing. Though, Akira had to remind himself of the boy's bad manners as well, which were so contrast with the bearing of his body. But it was possible that it was just Hikaru's natural brashness and stubborness that made him so opposite to tactfullness - a form of rebellion, not incapability.

So, even when it appeared to be easy to talk to Hikaru (He had been so open with Minato-san, all grinning and boyishly preening at her praises), the boy was actually a minefield if Akira overstepped. And before he knew it, he spent his day thinking of a child who was giving him silent treatment instead of Go. It was Minato-san's gentle inquiry of "Is anything the matter, Akira-sensei? You have been looking rather troubled," that brought him this realization.

To say he was terribly minded was an understatement.

"It's...nothing, Minato-san," he replied, endeavoring to sound less strained and frustrated. But Minato-san was observant in her own right, and caught on his lie with an ease of a familiar mother-figure.

"Is it about Hikaru-kun?"

Akira stiffened a sigh in his throat and gave her a nod. Minato-san began to smile at him, her eyes twinkling with mirthful understanding, "Just give the child a little bit of space, Akira-sensei. He may seem like a bright, careless boy, but he surely is private."

"And," Minato-san continued, "you two look like you've been getting along quite well. I've never seen Akira-sensei so animated before."

That saying surprised him more than Akira let on, and he was unable to form even a word of denial before Minato-san reminded him of his lesson with his students in the afternoon.

* * *

His first student, Shinode Aoi, came at precisely ten minutes before the appointed time. Aoi was in his last year of middle school with a minor spurt in height that left him not being the shortest boys in class, but neither the highest individuals. His impeccable glasses and his well-kempt hair only added up to his seriousness that often was the main target of joke for his bestfriend - Takeshi. Although Akira appreciated his student's puntuality, he was grateful that Hikaru had been out with Minato-san for grocery shopping. The Go pro was not ready to answer any questions just yet.

"Congratulation to passing the pro exam, Shinode-san," Akira pleasantly greeted the new shodan. Aoi bowed his head respectfully, "It's thanked to your guidance, Touya-sensei-"

Aoi was interrupted by an arm wrapping playfully around his neck and another holding him in a headlock. Akira sighed as he watched Fujimoto Takeshi laugh at his friend's attempt to break out of his grasp. Takeshi was tall - almost athletic with his sturdy figure -, and very joyous. His cheerful demeanors were alike those of Ashiwara 9-dan to an astonishing degree that could make Ogata Kisei scowl more fiercely if ever be mentioned.

"You're so formal, Aoi-kun! Geez, loosen up a bit and accept sensei's conpliment like a normal human being!"

"At least, I have some forms of mannerism and dignity! No one has such an atrocious manner as you! And let go of me this instance, Takeshi!"

"Hey, this is a punishment for abandoning us to become a professional first-"

"There is nothing to blame me for it! You guys were just bad-"

"Hey!"

"Sensei! Tell him to let go!"

Strangely, Akira was relieved by the usual banter, which brought him a much-needed familiarity after Hikaru's appearance had shaken his world. He let himself soak in his students' voices for some more seconds before firmly telling the boys to break it up. They immediately obeyed and followed him to the study room.

"Sensei, Akari said she would be late for the lesson because of some family emergencies," Takeshi informed while taking his seat beside his friend. Aoi seemed worried upon hearing this, but was apparently reluctant to ask.

"Is it serious?" Akira inquired concerned, and pretended that he didn't notice Aoi's shoulders relax slightly. He wouldn't wish to pry on his student 's crush after all (except for Minato-san's random comments about young love that had Shinode-kun blushing right to his ears).

Unfortunately, Takeshi shook his head, "I don't really know. She had been very vague about the details." And with that was the end of the topic. Akira then had his students recreate their games in the pro exam, pointing out where their stragegies had failed, and how to better their plays. In the middle of some discussions, when his students put down stones in specific places, Akira couldn't help thinking how Hikaru would make a different - more unique - move. The urge to play the boy again was somewhat disconcerting - but refreshing - to him. It'd been a long time for Akira to feel this...thrilled - awaiting for a game with a worthy opponent. He realized that the path he had walked so far had been too quiet - too tranquil; even when his generation rised to be called "A new wave", it lacked the evolutive tremor its namesake was supposed to mean.

Now a child unexpectedly barged into his life, and forced him to face this prolonged emptiness that he had abided so well. Suddenly, every move was clearer - more meaningful; every game became not enough. Akira wanted to feel the goban alighted again - to feel himself alighted with each hand again.

He'd thought of re-making his first game with Hikaru (not the first with Sai) for his students, but it felt too personal - like sharing something of discretion that he himself hadn't unravelled yet, a precious piece laid out for him only -, and Akira didn't trust anyone in handling or treasuring it right (Except for his father, maybe.). For now, he had to be patient with Hikaru, who was too cautious for his age as though he held in his hands too much fragility. And Akira also needed to get the boy to give him some contacts soon; the older man couldn't imagine how worried Hikaru's parents must be right now.

A noisy clattering resounding from the front door all of a sudden startled the Meijin and his two students out of their deep discussion. Takeshi was the first one to get up on his feet and headed for the shoji doors of the study room. The tall boy looked back at his mentor for permission before rushing out to where the ruckus was while Akira and Aoi followed with a calmer pace. The sight that greeted them just increased the confusion rather than cleared it. Standing rigidly at the entrance was his only female student - Fujisaki Akari - whose eyes were widening in surprise and anger.

And there was Hikaru, who was close to hiding behind a puzzled Minato-san - his arms still midly hovered above the spilled bag of groceries - looking pale like the boy had been caught on his misdoing. Unsettlement and silence seemed to engulf the scene until Akira heard Hikaru's low murmur.

"...Ohaiyo, Akari-nee chan."

#

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 **Author's note:** Sensei's library says that the Nihon Ki-in holds two pro exams a year - one in summer and one in autumn. I opt for summer since I'm quite obsessed with this season. But I'm still not sure about the exact months the Go professional examination takes place, so if there is any inaccuracy in said time please let me know.

Thank you for reading!


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